Showing only what you need to see

Last year I had the opportunity to photograph for a local manufacturing firm. And a few weeks ago I received a call from them once again for another job. It’s nice when clients appreciate your work enough to return to you again.

The firm, Merit Engineering, makes concrete saws. Not the sexiest photo topic ever, but still interesting. They also tool almost all the components that go into their saws. “Made in America” has something behind it. Nice to see.

When shooting for a manufacturing company I always try to portray the product. We always think of clean rooms, Intel commercials, etc. the reality is not often what you’d think…..

Shot with the IPhone as we started rolling on today’s shoot.

See, shop floors where things come together aren’t always clean rooms. Often there’s a lot of dirt and grime. Metal getting cut, welded, shaped, etc, leaves grunge everywhere. And you work where you work to get a shoot done. And while doing it you make sure that you’re showing only what’s important. The final product.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many hundreds of components were shot today. Basically, everything tooled in the shop that goes into the final giant concrete saw was photographed. My pants are dirty, my hands were dirty, and generally I now need a shower. But the final results were well worth it. I’ll be spending the weekend selecting and post processing. Fortunately there’s little post work to do. Got it right in the camera from the get go.

And yes, today’s images are right out of the camera. I’m satisfied to say the least.

I’ll get back to my last post on the business of photography next week. Since I actually had some business this week it didn’t leave too much blogging time.